[chuckles]

All right.

So if we go through the grievances systematically, again, these are the most historically grounded parts of the declaration, and you really have to understand the historical situation to appreciate it.

So with grievance one, "He's refused his assent to laws." Um, the king had the ultimate authority through his ministers in London to approve any laws passed by the colonial legislatures, and the colonists had passed a number of laws in recent years that the king had overturned or rejected.

Um, this included provisions such as, uh, stopping the international slave trade, which some of the individual colonies had tried to do before the Revolution.

But for whatever reason, the king's ministers refused to accept that law, and the colonists thought that was a violation of their rights and ultimately of their happiness and their ability to represent themselves through their legislatures.

Um, "He forbid his governors from passing laws of immediate and pressing importance unless suspended in operation." Now, the king was m- mandating that laws passed in the colonies have what they call a suspending clause, which means that the laws could not go into operation immediately in the colonies.

How does that final section transform the declaration from a petition for a redress of grievances, which means you can in fact redress our grievances, you could address it, right, to a justification for full revolution?

And she seems to have been very much encouraged by the men around her to nurture that talent and to be educated and to write.

Yes.

Although it was always her goal and the goal of her family for her to be a wife and mother.

And she did marry and she had five sons.

And I think that is how, at least in her younger life, she saw her mission.

She saw her goal.

It was to be a good wife and mother.

for,

Anonymously.

They did not write under their own names, and that wasn't just because they were a woman.

At this time, there were very strict libel laws in the colonies and in Great Britain.

And so it was, it was, uh, it was rather, rather, um, y- you could, you could get into legal trouble if you published something politically, uh, scandalous.

In any case, um-What happened with, with Judith Sargent Murray that Mary Beth was talking about is, you know, she started taking the ideas of the revolution, and as I suggest, applying them to herself.

Abigail Adams did that, but she i- did that in a letter to her husband when she said, "Remember the ladies." Mm-hmm.

But Judith Sargent Murray said, "Oh, men and women are equal.

Let Rosie talk first.